Sermon - 4th Sunday After Epiphany (2/2/2020)
Mic. 6:1-8; Ps. 15; 1 Cor. 1:18-31; Mt. 5:1-12
At the Jesuit high school that I attended, I was lucky enough to do fairly well in most subjects without trying all that hard. Things like math and history came quite easily to me – I know that other people really struggled with geometry proofs and memorizing dates, but for some reason those things came to me pretty effortlessly. Art, on the other hand, was a challenge. My artistic ability is pretty much nonexistent. I am incapable of drawing anything that doesn’t look completely ridiculous. Even as a younger kid, having to do arts and crafts projects would produce tremendous anxiety. Can’t I do some long division instead? I’m good at that. But in high school my insecurity went off the charts in art class. Because everybody can see what you’re doing and people in high school are so judgmental.
Our art teacher was actually a wonderful person, and not judgmental at all, and relentlessly positive about whatever any of the students did, even me. But she had a motto in big letters above the blackboard at the front of her classroom that, I have to say, made all of my stress about art class even worse. In the front of the room – and remember, this was a Catholic school – in the front of the room it said, in big bold letters, “Do Something Beautiful for God!” And since I was unable to do anything beautiful in art class, for God or for anybody, that motto came across to me as judgment: God wants you to do something beautiful, and you have failed. And it didn’t help to learn that this motto was not something Mrs. K. came up with because she was an art teacher; this was apparently the motto of Mother Teresa of Calcutta. And how could anyone not love Mother Teresa?
But perhaps it was the closeted Lutheran in me that also found that motto to be problematic. It was not until years later that I discovered, much to my delight, that Martin Luther was quite skeptical of the idea that we ought to be trying to do something beautiful for God. Now, that God had done something beautiful for me, this Luther was quite insistent upon. That God is doing something beautiful in the world, and if we’re lucky, we can do a little something beautiful with God, Luther would agree. And, if we are secure in the confidence of faith that God indeed loves us unconditionally, we might actually be able to forget about ourselves and our anxieties long enough to do something beautiful for our neighbor – this Luther believed and taught with enthusiasm.
But the idea that there is something we are supposed to do for God – separate from any notion of what God has done and is doing for us – this struck Luther as not only incorrect but dangerous. Because there is nothing human beings like better than to think that our relationship with God depends on what we do – good or bad – because then we are in control of that relationship. To be fair, I don’t think that’s what Mrs. K. meant to teach us with the motto she borrowed from Mother Teresa. That certainly was not how she put it into practice in how she treated us students. But studying Luther helped me to articulate part of what bothered me as a freshman in high school in 1976: that my worth as a human being and as a child of God has nothing to do with whether I do something beautiful or ugly or indeed anything at all. The good news is that I do have worth as a human being and a child of God, but because of who God is and what God has done for me. And anything that tells me that I deserve or don’t deserve God’s love based on something I have done is just going to feed my ego and my sense of my own self-importance and will eventually undermine my faith in the goodness and mercy of God.
That is not just the teaching of Martin Luther, but of each of the three Scripture readings appointed for this Sunday. It’s perhaps easiest to see in the first reading from the prophet Micah. The prophet describes a courtroom, where God goes up against a frustrated people. It’s just God and the people; I don’t think they had witnesses in this trial. (I’m not sure what to make of that.) In any event, God begins: You complain about me, but what have I done to you? I know what I did to you – I brought you out of slavery in Egypt and gave you the Promised Land. God recalls the story of King Balak of Moab and the prophet Balaam. If you don’t know it, it’s a great story in the book of Numbers, chapters 22 to 24, but the bottom line is that God gave the land to the people as a free gift because God wanted to do it, not because of anything the people did or didn’t do.
And then Micah has the people respond: So if God has done all this for us, what do we have to do for God? What beautiful thing do we have to do for God to repay God for this grace? Should we give God a thousand rams? Ten thousand rivers of oil? How about my firstborn son? Is that enough? And Micah says, no, God doesn’t want anything like that from you. God gave you this gift, this grace, so that you can have a relationship with God, so that you can be more like the God in whose image and likeness you were made. Just do this: do justice, as God does justice; love mercy, as God is merciful, and walk with God, as Adam and Eve walked with God in the Garden of Eden, in the cool of the evening, before things went so wrong.
Notice that Micah does not say that doing justice and loving mercy and walking with God are the things we need to do in order to get God to like us. The people keep thinking of what they can do to get God’s favor and grace, what sacrifice they can make, what they can do that will be pleasing to God, because then God will be in their debt, God will owe them something and they will be in control of their relationship with God. Instead, Micah says, God has already done everything. God already loves you and has already given you everything you need. All you have to do is accept it, and let yourself be drawn up into the life of God’s justice and mercy and walking together. That’s it.
Micah already understood who God is and what God has done. But the most complete revelation of God comes in the person of Jesus, God made flesh, and this is what Paul stresses to the church in Corinth. The first Christians in Corinth were deeply divided into factions, each of which thought that they were doing the the most beautiful thing for God, certainly better than what the others were doing. Paul has to teach them, for example, that they are all members of one body with different gifts – some are good at math and some are good at art and neither is better than the other and both are needed for the good of the whole, so stop fighting about who’s better.
But that’s much later in the letter. Where Paul begins is in today’s reading, with Jesus. He talks about how the message of Jesus runs directly against the wisdom of the world, which is very much concerned about what we accomplish and what we achieve and what beautiful things we can do. “Blessed are the poor in spirit?” No, the wisdom of the world says, blessed are the great in spirit, the visionary leaders, the people we look up to. “Blessed are the pure of heart?” No, the wisdom of the world says, blessed are those who are devious enough to accomplish what they set out to do! “Blessed are the peacemakers?” No, the wisdom of the world says, blessed are they who provoke conflict and then defeat their enemies, and win the war, or the competition, or the election. By any means necessary. As they say in sports, “If you’re not cheating, you’re not trying hard enough.”
The wisdom of the world is that it’s on me to do something great and amazing with my life – win a championship, win an election, start a great company, make lots of money. Of course that will mean someone else will lose a game, or lose the election, or go bankrupt, or live in poverty – but that’s their problem, not mine. “Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for justice?” No, the wisdom of the world says, life isn’t fair, get over it, and take what you can while you still have a chance.
The first Christians in Corinth took the wisdom of the world into the church with them, and they were competing with each other to be the very best Christians they could be. And Paul writes his letter to say: Stop it already! This is a community of followers of Jesus of Nazareth who pronounced God’s blessing on the meek, not the powerful; God’s blessing on the those who mourn, not those who are comfortable; God’s blessing on the merciful, not the vengeful; God’s blessings on the poor in spirit, not those who are applauded for their great deeds. This is a kingdom whose king rules from a cross. If you are still trying to accomplish something, Paul says, even if you think you’re doing it for God, you’re not. In the cross we see that God wins by losing; God defeats death by dying; God fights injustice not by killing bad guys but by giving his life for them in order to convert and reconcile and forgive and restore.
The wisdom of the world thinks that we have to do something beautiful to get God to like us – because then we will be in control over our relationship with God. The idea that the character of God is seen most clearly in Christ crucified – in accepting a brutal, humiliating, ugly death for the sake of the unrighteous and ungrateful people whom God loves and would do literally anything to redeem – goes completely against all of the wisdom of this world. But, Paul says, “God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.”
And like Micah, Paul says that now that we are in a right relationship with God because of Jesus, all we need to do is to be like God. Which is what Jesus said too. Those hunger and thirst for what is right will be satisfied, because God does what it right. Those who practice mercy will receive mercy, because God loves mercy. Those who have loved and been loved enough to mourn someone’s passing will be comforted, for those who love walk with God. Those who are willing to suffer for the sake of what is right will enter the kingdom of heaven, for in Christ God accepted suffering for the sake of the kingdom.
We come this morning to this space that is opened up for us by what God has done for us in Jesus Christ. We come here, as if to Micah’s courtroom, to remember what God has done for us, how Jesus gives himself to us to be our word, our food, our drink, our life. Not because we have done anything beautiful to deserve it, but because it is just who God is, to do justice and to love mercy and to walk with us. With God’s help we may go out from this place and, perhaps, do something beautiful for our neighbors. But mostly, we go out having been made a little bit more like the God who save us, doing a little more justice, loving a little more mercy, walking a bit more closely with God. In that, we are truly blessed.